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The government does not have any central mechanism to check misuse of its transport, especially the vehicles under various projects, allowing many officials and employees to avail themselves of transport facilities round the clock which they are not entitled to.
   An officer of the rank of joint secretary and above belongs to the ‘privileged group in the civil service and is entitled to 24-hour car facilities’ but those below the rank of joint secretary are not entitled to such facilities, said an official at the establishment ministry.
   ‘Those who are entitled to 24-hour car facilities are enjoying it. So there is no question of misuse of the transport under the government pool….But there is no central mechanism to oversee the use of vehicles procured under different projects,’ transport commissioner of the directorate of government transport Md Ibadat Ali told New Age on Thursday.
   He said the authorities concerned were supposed to hand over the vehicles to the transport pool on completion of the projects under various ministries.
   ‘It is the responsibility of the authorities concerned to look after the project vehicles until they are given to the transport pool on completion of the projects,’ Ibadat, who holds the rank of an additional secretary, said in reply to a question.
   Nowadays most departments and directorates do not hand over the project cars – mostly sport utility vehicles – to the government transport pool on the pretext that the project duration could be extended or that new projects were being taken, said officials.
   They alleged that the departments and directorates offered the SUVs procured under different projects to the high-ups for their personal use as they wanted to make happy the high officials close to the ministers and secretaries.
   ‘The authorities under different ministries and divisions offer luxury vehicles to the high officials at the ministries for personal use…It is a common practice in the administration,’ an officer said. ‘Some senior officials in this way get one vehicle from the pool and another from a department and his family uses the cars.’
   Many such officials below the rank of joint secretary are using cars from various projects under different ministries, said the official adding that private secretaries to ministers and secretaries holding either the rank of deputy secretary or senior assistant secretary usually enjoyed car facilities offered by the departments and directorates under the respective ministries.
   ‘Some ministries have their own arrangements for providing car facilities for officials like PS, APS and PRO at the offices of the ministers.’
   All these luxury cars, originally procured for project works, do not have an emblem for identification while each car or jeep of the government transport pool has a flag stand for a distinction, said a deputy director of the directorate of government transport, adding that the government cars had number plates in red till 1990.
   The colour was changed into black and white at the fag end of the HM Ershad’s government to avoid the public wrath when an anti-government movement was at its peak, said the official who has been serving the transport pool for 27 years.
   He said the transport pool provides a car for each minister and one microbus for use by the officials of his office.
   The government has to spend around Tk 35,000 against each car for driver, fuel charge and maintenance as each official is allocated 180 liters of fuel a month, said the official.
   During 1997-2009, the transport pool received around 900 motor vehicles from various projects while it has a total of 602 cars and microbuses of its own in operation, according to official record.
   Meanwhile, the government has taken an initiative to procure 40 cars and 30 microbuses for its transport pool.

Law minister Shafique Ahmed on Monday blasted Justice Nozrul Islam Chowdhury for his remark on the process of passing laws in the Parliament, saying that he had made the ‘ridiculous comment’ due ‘to his ignorance’.
   He said that a sitting judge of the High Court cannot speak in public in this manner against the lawmakers and the Parliament.
   ‘Enactment of laws is a difficult process…He has made a ridiculous remark on the process of passing laws due to his ignorance,’ the minister, while visiting the old High Court building, told reporters in reply to a query.
   Speaking at the meeting on ‘Repression of the Media and Political Violence: State Responsibility and Democratic Culture’, organized by rights organization Odhikar on Saturday, Justice Nozrul criticised the parliamentarians for not initiating serious discussion before passing a law. ‘A number of lawmakers do not go even read the texts of the laws that they pass,’ he remarked scathingly.
   The law minister’s reaction was expressed a day after his deputy threatened to complain to the Supreme Judicial Council against Justice Nozrul for making contemptuous comments about lawmakers and the Parliament in public.
   Shafique visited the old High Court building to select a site for the war crimes tribunal.
   ‘Being a lawmaker, I feel aggrieved at the derogatory remarks by Justice Nozrul Islam Chowdhury against the Members of Parliament…I myself or other lawmakers will complain against him to the Supreme Judicial Council through the speaker,’ the state minister for law, Quamrul Islam, told reporters at a press briefing on Sunday.
   A censure motion might also be moved in the House in this connection, he added.
   ‘Justice Nozrul Islam, while speaking at a discussion meeting organised by Odhikar, at one stage made a derogatory remark in an indecent manner against the MPs by saying that after clerks prepare the laws, the illiterate MPs pass them with applause by thumping tables in the House,’ said Quamrul, adding that the judge had ridiculed the process of the passage of laws in the Parliament.
   At Saturday’s discussion meeting, Justice Nozrul also said that torture of people in custody and extrajudicial killings were a matter of concern to the judiciary.

The government is expected to float an international tender for construction of Padma Multipurpose Bridge next February after appointing the lead donor agency to coordinate the implementation of multi-billion dollar project with loans from the overseas development partners.
   A finance ministry meeting on Padma Bridge project held on Monday reviewed the lending proposals of the World Bank and Asian Development which are vying to be the lead donor agency.
   The meeting however decided to take help of the Prime Minister in settling the issue of appointing the lead donor within next couple of days, the meeting sources told New Age.
   The lead donor will be responsible for mobilizing funds and acting as the intermediary between the donors and the government in the process of taking major decisions, especially on the final design of the project, tendering and selection of bids.
   The finance minister, AMA Muhith, told reporters after the meeting that tender for Padma Bridge would be floated in February. He hoped that its constriction work would start in 2010.
   The finance minister said the projected cost of the bridge escalated to $ 2.4 billion with World Bank having assured to lend $ 1.2 billion.
   The other main donor agency—the ADB—has committed to provide a credit worth $ 550 million. Besides, Islamic Development Bank has agreed to chip in $ 120 million, Japan government $ 300 million and Abu Dhabi Development Group $ 31 million, he added.
   The Awami League-led government has taken up the proposed Padma Bridge as one of its top priority projects and wants to complete its construction by 2013, the year before its five-year tenure expires.

The Mauritius government has assured Bangladesh that it would consider allowing Bangladeshi workers who did not have criminal records to stay back in the island country and continue to work there.
   Mauritius foreign minister Arvin Boolell told his Bangladesh counterpart Dipu Moni, who was on a brief one-day official visit to the Indian Ocean island state on Monday, that his government would consider the cases of the persons who did not have criminal records to stay and continue to work there, Bangladesh’s honorary consul general to Mauritius A Ganny Joonas told New Age over phone last evening.
   In July, the Mauritius government had decided to deport about half of the 12,000 Bangladeshi workers, mostly in the textiles sector, for providing jobs for locals in response to demands from the trade unions there.
   Mauritius decided to send back at least 6,000 workers by December 2009 due to the global economic meltdown. Irregularities by some recruiting agencies of Bangladesh and some unlawful activities, including passport forgery and violation of local laws, also annoyed the Mauritius authorities.
   The reported crimes by a few Bangladeshis too have pushed the jobs of several thousand Bangladeshis into uncertainty, said an official at the expatriates’ welfare ministry in Dhaka.
   At present Bangladeshi workers are dominating the job market in Mauritius, accounting for 50 per cent of the overseas workers in the textiles, tourism and fish processing sectors.
   Dipu Moni and her Mauritius counterpart also signed an agreement on avoidance of double taxation and fiscal evasion between the two countries.
   Dipu Moni is expected to return home tomorrow.

Pakistani prosecutors were reviving graft cases on Monday against the interior minister, Rehman Malik, and hundreds of officials, setting the stage for a showdown with a shaky government.
   The president, Asif Ali Zardari, four cabinet ministers and 8,000 bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen and others may face legal action after the Supreme Court annulled a two-year amnesty protecting them from charges.
   The move has sparked calls for Zardari to resign, rocking the US-backed civilian government at a time of rising extremist attacks and mounting pressure from Washington to crack down on al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
   The ruling party is determined to ride out what could be the worst challenge to Zardari’s troubled 15 months in power, pledging to fight any charges brought against its leaders and making it clear there will no resignations.
   ‘The allegations are false. I’m not worried at all. We think that it’s good that we’ll go through that process and clear our names,’ Malik told CNN in the latest in a series of interviews pledging his innocence.
   But the net closed in Monday as he received a second court summons, to appear January 2 over revived corruption charges.
   ‘Mr Malik will appear in court. We are not afraid of appearing in the courts,’ his defence lawyer Amjad Iqbal told reporters in the garrison city Rawalpindi, where Taliban militants have staged increasingly brazen attacks.
   Prosecutors confirmed they were bringing hundreds of cases to court.
   ‘We reopened all the cases after the Supreme Court judgment and hearings in a number of cases all over Pakistan are going on,’ said Salar Ghazni Khan, spokesman for the National Accountability Bureau.
   ‘Around 20 anti-corruption courts are working... There are hundreds of cases pending and following the Supreme Court verdict we expect the number of these courts to increase substantially,’ said one bureau official.
   The end of the 2007 National Reconciliation Ordinance was feted by a public disappointed by corruption and government performance as Pakistan grapples with recession, social ills and extremist attacks.
   The Pakistan People’s Party won elections in 2008, marking a long-awaited return to civilian rule, but Zardari’s relations with the powerful military are strained and his public approval ratings at rock-bottom.
   It is possible lawyers could now challenge his immunity in the Supreme Court and petition judges to declare him no longer eligible for office.
   Travel restrictions have been slapped on up to 253 individuals and the defence minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, was banned from leaving on an official trip to China.
   Critics say the revived graft cases are politically motivated and involve allegations relatively insignificant in a country ranked 40th most corrupt in the world by watchdog Transparency International.
   Zardari, so tainted by corruption that he is nicknamed ‘Mr Ten Per cent’, spent 11 years in jail on charges ranging from corruption to murder.
   The defence minister has spent time in prison and the prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, spent five years in jail under former military ruler Pervez Musharraf on charges of misusing authority.
   The Supreme Court has ordered a monitoring body to oversee anti-corruption trials, granting itself the power to ensure action is taken and exacerbating pressure on the government.
   ‘We don’t believe in confrontation... Party policy is to defend the cases in the courts,’ PPP spokeswoman Fauzia Wahab told Geo television.
   Governments in Pakistan have fallen as a result of military intervention over accusations of graft. Unlike Zardari, cabinet ministers have no immunity and if convicted would not be eligible to hold office.
   ‘A tussle has already started between the government and the judiciary,’ senior lawyer Salman Raja told AFP.
   Most analysts believe the government may be forced into a cabinet reshuffle and that while the end of the amnesty cannot unseat Zardari, the ensuing fracas may set the ball rolling towards his dismissal.
   ‘The ultimate exit of Zardari depends on political pressure. If the pressure is huge, he may quit but not on the basis of the court verdict,’ senior lawyer Abid Husain Minto told AFP.
   Pakistan’s main opposition party said on Monday it would not support any unconstitutional action against the president or his government but warned of protests if Zardari did not give up some powers, reports Reuters.
   Some members of the main opposition party, led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, have called for Zardari and the two ministers to step down, the party has been circumspect.
   A spokesman for the party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), said the party felt it was the ‘moral duty’ of Zardari and the two ministers to step down, but it was up to them.
   ‘Nawaz Sharif has very clearly stated that democracy has to go on and if someone thinks that he will do something unconstitutional, he won’t get our support.’

The British prime minister, Gordon Brown, on Monday accused countries of holding the UN climate summit to ransom as bitter recriminations swirled over the outcome of the negotiations.
   While China’s premier Wen Jiabao insisted his government had played an ‘important and constructive’ role, Britain said the meeting had lurched into farce and pointed the finger of blame at Beijing.
   And the summit host, the Danish prime minister, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, rapped the lower-level negotiators for failing to make headway in nearly two weeks of talks and then leaving their masters with too much to do at the climax.
   Brown said lessons must be learned.
   ‘Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down those talks. Never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries,’ he said.
   While Brown refrained from naming countries, his climate change minister Ed Miliband said China had led a group of countries that ‘hijacked’ the negotiations which had at times presented ‘a farcical picture to the public’.
   The agreement finally put together by a select group of leaders set no target for greenhouse—gas emissions cuts and is not legally binding — omissions Miliband blamed on Beijing.
   ‘We did not get an agreement on 50 per cent reductions in global emissions by 2050 or on 80 per cent reductions by developed countries,’ he wrote in The Guardian.
    ‘Both were vetoed by China, despite the support of a coalition of developed and the vast majority of developing countries.’ Miliband’ aides told the daily that Sudan, Bolivia and other left-wing Latin American governments were included in the criticism.
   China, the world’ top polluter, doggedly resisted pressure for outside scrutiny of its emissions.
   Wen however rejected any suggestion it had played a negative role and said China had ‘expressed its fullest sincerity and made its utmost effort’.
   The Copenhagen Accord set ‘long-term goals’ for the global community in addressing climate change, Wen said, according to comments released by the foreign ministry.
   ‘This is the result of the efforts from all sides and has wide approval. This result did not come easy and should be cherished.’
   France’ prime minister Francois Fillon, on a visit to Beijing, trod delicately but showed Europe’s frustration with the outcome.
    ‘France, like all of the European Union, would have wanted the Copenhagen Accord to go a bit further,’ he said.
   His comments echoed those of US president Barack Obama who acknowledged that all of the world’s polluters would quickly have to do more after the ‘extremely difficult and complex negotiations’.
   Rasmussen, heavily criticised for his stewardship of the summit of around 130 leaders, said the agreement was ‘better than nothing’.
   The Dane said the conference had become quagmired before the arrival of the leaders for Friday’s finale with negotiators having made negligible progress since its start on December 7.
   ‘When the leaders arrived, there was not even a framework agreement to discuss and we had 24 hours, which is too little time, to create a text which should have been negotiated during the two weeks of the conference,’ he told Danish television.
   As failure loomed, Rasmussen helped steer negotiations involving the leaders of the United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa and major European countries that resulted in the final agreement.
   The accord promised 100 billion dollars for poor nations that risk bearing the brunt of the global warming fallout, and set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).
   That however stopped short of the demand for a 1.5 degree limit low-lying island nations whose existence is threatened by rising sea levels.
   Scientists say hundreds of millions of people are threatened in the next few decades by worsening drought, floods, storms and rising sea levels as a result of rising temperatures.

The government has framed changes against seven officials of the ranks of senior assistant secretaries and deputy secretaries for holding a meeting at the secretariat to press for promotion.
   ‘The ministry is likely to issue letters tomorrow to each of the seven officials asking them to explain why disciplinary action should not be taken against them for violation of the civil service conduct rules… They will have to answer in 10 days,’ said an official at the establishment ministry.
   After inquiry, the establishment ministry has initiated departmental proceedings against Mizanur Rahman, Ibrahim Khalil, Niamat Ullah, Washim Zabbar, Jamal Abdul Naser, Khalid Mahmud and Jafar Siddique, who reportedly held a meeting at the establishment ministry to push their demand for review of promotions to the rank of deputy secretary and joint secretary, on charge of violating service conduct rules.
   Around 60 officials from various batches of the Bangladesh Civil Service in a group on the morning of September 9 came to the cabinet division and the establishment ministry to give vent to their grievances against ‘irregularities and favouritism’ in the promotions. They held talks with the cabinet secretary and the establishment secretary who advised them to file applications for review. They also held a meeting at the establishment ministry’s library room to press their demand.
   The Awami League-led government on September 7 gave promotion to 494 officials, mostly from the administrative cadre, to the ranks of deputy secretary, joint secretary and additional secretary, in excess of vacant positions, causing resentment in the bureaucracy.
   Aggrieved officials vented their grievances and filed complaints with the establishment ministry and the cabinet division, seeking review of the total promotion process.
   Later, the establishment ministry show-caused 11 officials and held individual hearings on charge of violation of rules.
   Establishment secretary Iqbal Mahmood earlier told reporters that there might have been some ‘human errors’ in the promotions and the government would look into it.
   Over 250 aggrieved officials at different levels in civil bureaucracy have so far submitted applications to the establishment ministry and the cabinet division, seeking review of the promotion process. They claimed that the government had deprived them of due promotions although they were eligible.

At least 20 people were injured and more than a score of vehicles damaged as police battled stone-throwing garment workers protesting at mistreatment of workers by managements and sudden closure of a factory at Ashulia on the outskirts of Dhaka on Monday morning.
   The angry workers went on the rampage blocking Tongi-Ashulia road and damaging more than 20 vehicles stranded on the road.
   Police and witnesses said the management of Design Jeans Limited located at Jamgora imposed some restrictions on the use of its restroom by the workers on Sunday, including an order that none would be allowed to use the restroom for more than five minutes.
   As the workers started protesting against the decision, scuffles broke out between the protesters and a group of workers believed to be loyal to the management on Sunday night.
   Fearing violence, the management decided to close the factory for three days from Monday without notice.
   On Monday morning, several hundred workers came to the factory for duty but found a notice on the main gate on the three-day closure of the factory.
   Enraged by the sudden action of the management, the workers tore off the notice and started an instant protest demonstration.
   The workers brought out a procession chanting slogans against the management and set up barricades on Tongi-Ashulia road halting traffic for about an hour.
   Large contingents of police went to the scene and asked the workers to withdraw the barricade but the protesters refused.
   The clashes broke out when police swung into action to disperse the protesters. The workers countered the action by hurling stones at the police. During the fighting, a group of workers attacked vehicles stranded on the Ashulia-Tongi road leaving 20 people, including RMG workers, passengers, pedestrians and police injured.
   The officer-in-charge of Ashulia police station, Mohammad Sirazul Islam told New Age that the lawmen had brought the situation under control.
   A tense situation is prevailing in the area and police and members of Rapid Action Battalion were deployed in front of the factory to avert further troubles.

Bangladesh Chhatra League, an associate wing of the ruling Awami League, on Sunday night filed a case against 150 members of Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student front of Jamaat-e-Islami, in connection with the violent clash at Bogra Azizul Haque College that left at least 50 people injured.
   The BCL convener of the college unit, Abu Jafar Mahamudunnabi Russel, filed the case with Sadar police station against 150 leaders and activists of Shibir, including its college unit general secretary Mahmudul Hasan Badsha, accusing them of attacking their peaceful procession.
   The plaintiff in the case alleged that the Chhatra League activists came under attack by Shibir men as they were burning copies of Bangla daily Amar Desh for carrying a news report on alleged bribe-taking by the prime minister’s son, Sajib Wazed Joy.
   Soon after filing the case, police raided different hostels of the college and arrested two Shibir activists from Jaharulnagar area early on Monday.
   The two arrested were identified as Ismail Hossain, 24, a resident of Durgapur under Kahalu Upazila of the district and Anwarul Islam, 22, of Rakhalburuj under Gobindhaganj Upazila of Gaibandha district.
   Investigation officer for the case Sub-inspector Abu Obaid told New Age that they were on the look out for other accused Shibir activists to arrest them.
   Officer-in-charge of Sadar police station Jahangir Alam said that they would do everything to restore academic atmosphere in the college following Sunday’s clash.
   Asked whether Shibir filed any case, second officer of the police station said that no case was filed by the Shibir men till filing the report at around 4:00pm.
   The activists of the two student organisations traded gunshots, vandalised three hostels of the college, set fire to a nearby cold-storage and a warehouse owned by a leader of Liberal Democratic Party on Sunday.
   The fighting which broke out at around midday on Sunday continued intermittently into late afternoon and spilled over to surrounding areas.
   Hails of stones descended on the college premises as the rival activists attacked each other forcing the general students to run for cover. Police arrived at the scene much later and had to fire at least 50 teargas shells to disperse the fighting groups.
   The college authorities in the afternoon closed the institution for an indefinite period and asked students to vacate the hostels.
   Witnesses said Chhatra League activists had brought out a procession on the campus around midday in protest against the report in Amar Desh and set fire to copies of the newspaper. As they were staging the protest, a group of Shibir activists who were standing nearby pounced on them with clubs and knives shouting slogans against the BCL.
   The Chhatra League activists regrouped and returned to the campus at around 1:00pm. Rival activists continued chasing each other for one hour and at around 2:00pm the Shibir men launched an organised attack from their stronghold at Jamilnagar.
   A number of gunshots were fired and several crude bombs went off during the clash.

The prosecution has brought allegations of looting, spreading rumour and criminal activities against the suspected BDR mutineers of Feni region. Trial proceedings of the special tribunal formed at 19 Rifles Battalion headquarters began at around 10:00am on Monday when 62 accused border guards were produced before the court.
   The BDR director general, Major General Moinul Islam, who led the special court, adjourned the court until January 24, allowing the accused an opportunity for self-defence within this period.
   The trial proceedings ended at 11:30am for the second day.
   At the Monday’s hearing, prosecutor Lt Col Gazi Salahuddin briefed on the incidents that took place on February 26 at the Feni headquarters of BDR.
   He said Subedar Maj Fakir Abdul Jalil and BHM Havilder Mohammad Ruhul Amin had led the mutiny at Feni headquarters.
   Havilder Khorshed Kabir, Havilder Fazlul Haque, Havilder Mohammad Ali and nine other non-commissioned officers spread rumour of attack on the Feni headquarters.
   Soldiers looted arms and ammunition from the armoury during the mutiny.
   The mutineers led by Nayek Mahbubur Rahman and Nayek Mokhlesur Rahman spread panic in the area by compelling the shopkeepers to pull down their shutters and put barricade on the Feni-Maijdi Highway, Salahuddin said.
   The prosecutor demanded exemplary punishment for the accused on verification of their charges.
   Deputy attorney general Mohammad Farhad Hossain, Lt Col Md Akhteruzzaman and Major Md Maksudul Alam assisted in the trial proceedings.
   The accused will be able to get legal assistance from lawyers for self defence, Salahuddin told reporters after Monday’s trial proceedings.
   The trial of the suspected mutineers began on Sunday, which is the third in a series of such hearings on the mutiny. Earlier, it took place at Rangamati and Satkhira.
   Daganbhuiyan police filed a case charging 62 border guards who had expressed solidarity with the bloody rebellion at the BDR headquarters in Dhaka in February.
   They were produced before the Feni divisional judicial magistrate’s court on May 14, and have been detained in Feni jail since then.
   The first trial of mutiny suspects began in Rangamati on November 24, followed by a trial in Satkhira on December 7.
   The bloody February 25-26 mutiny at the BDR headquarters in Dhaka killed over 73 people, 57 of them army officers deputed to the paramilitary force. The rebellion also spread to other BDR outposts across the country.
   On November 15, the government formed six special courts, including two in Dhaka, to try some 3,500 border guards accused in some 40 cases around the country.

The Cabinet will decide how the new budgetary provision of the Public-Private Partnership will be executed for commissioning huge infrastructure projects, said sources in the Board of Investment.
   A draft policy and guidelines for making the PPP operational have already been sent to the Prime Minister’s Office, which supervises the functioning of the BoI, for scrutiny before the issue is discussed by the Cabinet at a meeting soon.
   The Cabinet may also decide if a new law will be required for determining the procedures, including awarding contracts without tender for implementing such joint-venture projects, said sources.
   This is the sorry state of the implementation of the PPP about six months after an amount of Tk 2,500 crore was earmarked in the current budget to attract investments in sectors such as infrastructure, energy and human resources development.
   ‘According to our plan, we hope that the PPP budget management will be fully operational by September next year,’ finance minister AMA Muhith said in his budget speech delivered in the Parliament on June 11.
   If the policy is endorsed, a separate cell or wing under the BoI will be responsible for coordinating the investment proposals under the PPP as well as for framing necessary policies for regulating and implementing this initiative, official sources told New Age.
   A proposal was made to appoint a new chief executive officer to head a 16-member executive committee, comprising officers and consultants, but officials argued that the BoI should not have a second chief executive alongside its executive chairman.
   ‘The BoI has a shortfall of required manpower to execute such a sophisticated concept [PPP]. So a proposal has been forwarded to post 16 bright officers and, if possible, consultants to make the PPP operational,’ said a highly placed source in the BoI.
   When he was asked how a contract would be awarded to an entrepreneur directly, the source pointed out that the government would need to prepare a new law to override the provisions on compulsory tender as per the existing Public Procurement Rules.
   Already, the sources said, many people have forwarded various proposals, expressing their interest in making investments under the ‘new window of opportunity’, but the BoI has referred such proposals to the ministries and agencies concerned.
   Meanwhile, the government has floated tenders seeking investment proposals for projects such as the Dhaka Elevated Expressway and a feasibility study on a deep-sea port in Sonadia.
   Immediately after announcing the PPP in the budget, the government also identified seven huge projects with an estimated resource requirement of about $14 billion.
   In the PPP the estimated shortfall of resources, necessary to attain the rate of economic growth that the ruling Awami League had pledged in its election manifesto, has been shown at $28 billion (Tk 1,96,000 crore) till 2014.

The federal government was closed Monday after a record-breaking snowstorm swept across the northeastern United States and put a damper on one of the biggest shopping weekends of the year.
   Just days before Christmas, the eastern seaboard from North Carolina to New England was digging out from the worst blizzard in years, which closed train and bus service, paralysed air traffic, crippled motorists and left hundreds of thousands of residents without power in some areas.
   Americans pining for a white Christmas got more than they bargained for, with local officials urging residents to hunker down indoors as record snowfall wreaked havoc on roadways.
   And with the roads and transportation in disarray, many churches cancelled Sunday services and some schools planned closures ahead of the December 25 holiday.
   Meanwhile, the death toll from winter storms across Europe rose to at least 80 on Monday as transport chaos grew amid mounting anger over the failure of Eurostar high-speed trains.
   With tens of thousands stranded by the cancellation of London-to-Paris trains and hundreds of flights across the continent, new accidents and mass power cuts added to the big freeze tumult.
   A car that veered off an icy road caused the derailment of a Paris commuter train, injuring 36 people. Another commuter train in the Croatian capital hit a buffer injuring 50 people.
   Polish authorities said 42 people, many of them homeless, had died of cold over three days in the country after temperatures plunged to minus 20 degrees Celsius.
   Ukraine reported 27 deaths while six people were killed in accidents in Germany and three in Austria. France has reported at least two deaths of homeless, and the power company cut electricity to two million people on Monday saying it was needed to avoid an even bigger blackout amid surging demand.
   More flights were cancelled in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and main highways were blocked across Europe where some regions had more than 50 centimetres of snow.
   The breakdown of the Eurostar service under the Channel, linking London with Paris and Brussels, has symbolised Europe’s suffering.
   After the nightmare of more than 2,000 people stuck in the tunnel when five trains broke down Friday night, tens of thousands more people have missed trains that have been cancelled since then.
   With no services planned until at least Tuesday, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, summoned the head of the state SNCF rail company, Guillaume Pepy, to demand a speedy resumption of the service.
   Eurostar said trains may start again Tuesday if test runs through the tunnel ‘go well’ but that normal service would not resume before Christmas on Friday.
   A Paris commuter train derailed late Sunday injuring at least 36 people, according to authorities. A car swerved on ice and hit a bridge wall sending concrete onto the rails of the commuter line, police said. Firefighters had to evacuate 300 people on the train.
   The main commuter line running east to west across the Paris region has been out of action for 12 days because of a strike.
   Authorities also investigated whether heavy snow caused a crash at Zagreb’s main railway station where the commuter train smashed into a concrete buffer. One person among the 50 injured suffered life-threatening injuries, police said.
   Air traffic was again badly hit across Europe where temperatures remained glacial: minus 20 degrees Celsius in Sibiu in Romania, where more than 50 centimetres of snow fell, and minus seven Celsius in Venice, Italy.
   Seven hundred people spent the night on camp beds at Amsterdam-Schipol airport. Authorities said more flights were likely to be cancelled after dozens were grounded Sunday.
   The Dutch rail network was also badly hit Monday with the railway company advising commuters to stay at home.
   Heavy snowfall led to more delays and cancellations at Frankfurt and Duesseldorf airports in Germay, where more than 500 flights were cancelled or redirected on Sunday.
   At least six people died throughout Germany over the weekend due to exposure to Arctic temperatures or in car accidents.
   Temperatures are forecast to rise this week after hitting a frigid minus 33.6 degrees Celsius Saturday in Bavaria.
   Twenty per cent of flights out of Paris-Charles de Gaulle were cancelled Monday morning and 174 from Madrid-Barajas airport were called off.
   Flights from Lisbon to Madrid were among those cancelled while main roads in northern Portugal were cut by snow.
   Brussels airport also reported cancellations and delays.

Formerly conjoined Bangladeshi twins Trishna and Krishna left hospital on Monday, after Australian doctors who separated their fused brains decided they should celebrate their third birthday at home.
   The girls, who were born joined at the head, have amazed medics with their recovery since a complex, 32-hour operation to separate them five weeks ago.
   ‘We are absolutely delighted with their progress,’ Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital neurosurgeon Wirginia Maixner said of the girls, who turn three on Tuesday.
   ‘I look forward to seeing them live a long and happy life — that’s my wish for them.’
   Trishna and Krishna were brought to Melbourne two years ago after they were discovered in a Dhaka orphanage by Australian aid workers who realised they faced certain death unless they received intensive medical care.
   Arriving in Australia dangerously ill, the twins were nursed back to health by their guardians and staff at the Royal Children’s Hospital who prepared them for the marathon separation surgery.
   Although the girls were given only a 25 per cent chance of them both surviving the difficult operation without brain damage, both have a shown remarkable resilience since the surgery.
   They are now finding their feet, a change from their old habit of crawling around on their backs, and doctors believe they have come through the operation without serious neurological damage.

The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, returned home this afternoon after attending the UN-sponsored global climate conference in the Danish capital.
   A flight of the Emirates airlines carrying the prime minister flew in Dhaka at about 4:25pm. On her way back home, the prime minister had stopovers at Heathrow Airport in the UK and Dubai Airport in the UAE.
   Hasina left Dhaka for Copenhagen on December 14.
   The prime minister delivered her speech at the conference on December 16 where she made a strong plea that Bangladesh and other most vulnerable countries ‘must be provided with compensatory grants and easily accessible adequate funds to meet the full cost of adaptation’.

Amnesty International announced Monday the appointment of a new secretary general, Salil Shetty, an Indian national who has been director of the UN’s Millennium Campaign for the past six years.
   ‘We are thrilled that Salil will be joining us and leading Amnesty International as we renew our fight to end injustice — campaigning with those imprisoned because of their ideas, those on death row, those being tortured, and those who have their rights denied because they live in poverty,’ said Peter Pack, chairman of the London-based rights group’s executive committee.
   Shetty ran British development charity ActionAid for five years until 2003, when he joined the UN Millennium Campaign tasked with realising the Millennium Development Goals. He will take over at Amnesty in June.
   Amnesty’s current secretary general, Irene Khan, will step down after eight years on December 31.